Democracy and the Philippine Left

Abstract

This paper finds the root of the difficulty of practically every group comprising the Philippine Left to predict the growing importance of the local struggle for democracy in their basic theoretical and analytical perspectives, which allowed for the identification of the main sources of power only outside of the political sphere. The Philippine Left did not believe that reformation of the organs of the state would create significantly better preconditions for democracy. Instead, they believe that the members of the dominating class holding genuine economic and political power need to be tackled head on. While many critics emphasized of the lack of democracy within the Philippine Left, and while some of them suggested alternative tactics that would include, for instance, participation in elections, no primary, long-term interest in the issues of democracy followed from any of the contending approaches.